WHAT COULD HAVE CAUSED MY 2 YEAR OLD HYDROLIC ELEVATOR TO OVERHEAT AND BURN THE HYDROLIC OIL. I own a 3 story building that is 2 years old. The last month we have had many calls for leveling adjustments, doors not opening and entrapments. Last week when I opened the building I found the cause of heavy burnt oil smell to be the elevator. The motor must not of shut off and continued to operate and overheated the hydrolic oil setting off the fire detection system. What caused the motor to continue running?

Thanks for any help. Don Warren

-- Don Warren (TINMAN@WARRENHEATING.COM), May 20, 2002

Answers

There are numerous possibilities.

What brand of elevator do you have?

Who is your elevator service company and what do they say?

-- John Brannon (akaelevman@aol.com), May 20, 2002.

Hydrolic pump motor

Going on the information you have given.....contact welding on the WYE,or DELTA switch may have caused the pump motor to fail.Or if it's a submerged motor contaminents in the oil may have the insulation in the motor windings to fail,and the motor to burn out

-- Glenn D (BONER 3988@aol.com), May 21, 2002.

You must have a submerged pump motor unit. The motor overheating is what heated the oil. A common cause of that would be your WYE or DELTA contactor contacts staying up even though the coil was deenergized. Contact welding or a malfunction of the contactor armature piece are 2 conditions which will cause this. This is what is called single phasing the motor and everything will heat up pretty fast. I've actually seen smoke bellowing off the oil.The motors' internal thermal overload should eventually trip. The motor will probably still be good but the oil's viscocity will have changed too dramatically to achieve stable floor levels. Relevels will ensue unless you drain the tank and refill with new oil. Also the valve O- rings might have been damaged by the heat as well,which will also cause irratic leveling.

-- Jim-IUEC (upanddown@comcast.net), May 22, 2002.

From the statments you made, all this (calls) started the last month about repeated calls with floor levels. Sounds like the valve has trash in it or valve going south . What type elevator do you have most valves has screens that need cleaning or replacing.

-- richard (elevator_bbr@hotmail.com), May 25, 2002.

Hydrolic???

hydraulic

hy·drau·lic [hi dróllik] adjective driven by fluid: relating to or operated by a device in which pressure applied to a piston is transmitted by a fluid to a larger piston, giving rise to a larger force

[Early 17th century. Via Latin hydraulicus, from Greek hudraulikos, from hudor, “water” + aulos, “pipe.”]

—hy·drau·li·cal·ly, adverb

Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999,2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

-- Fred Baltes (Elman101@pacbell.net), June 02, 2002.

if u r still interested

i recently had the same problem where the oil had been burnt due to the motor continuing to run...in the lead up to this there had been numerous calls for doors not opening causing entrapments. no 1 found the a fault. when this fault happened i found the lift continually going up to the top then back down to the bottom...the thermal would trip after numerous trips the would restart once it had cooled down just a touch...it the would start doing it again...it turned out to b the shaft info..problem with it not reading the magnets and possibly due to a programing fault, the lift does not stop but will continue to go up and down "looking" for the magnets to tell it its position which would not happen as the unit had completely failed...hopefully that will help answer ur question.

-- phil (phil@hotmail.com), June 30, 2002.

We need Hydraulic Machin which can rotate nonstoply another machine (such as pump). Have thise kind of Machine?

-- Mohammad Shohidul Islam (msi_bd10ap@yahoo.co.in), August 07, 2003.

Come on guys one of you hit it on the head...The contacts welded...dont bs this guy

-- (dss4u@msn.com), March 02, 2004.